Robert Curl

Born on 23 August 1933 in Alice, Texas, Robert Curl is a Nobel Prize–winning chemist known for the discovery of fullerenes. Curl became fascinated with chemistry from an early age, starting with a chemistry set he received from his parents when he was 9 years old. Determined to become a chemist, he earned his bachelor’s in chemistry in 1954 at Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas, and his PhD in 1957 from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he used IR spectroscopy to study the bond angle of disiloxane. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, Curl returned to Rice in 1958 as an assistant professor and remained there for the rest of his career. In 1976 he began collaborating on various projects using laser spectroscopy with fellow Rice chemist Richard Smalley. One experiment, performed in collaboration with Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex in England, was designed to simulate the formation of molecules in carbon-rich red giant stars. In 1985 that experiment revealed a new allotrope of carbon that the trio of researchers called fullerene, because its structure resembled the geodesic domes designed by American architect R. Buckminster Fuller. They named the spherical fullerene with 60 carbon atoms buckminsterfullerene, which is often shortened to buckyball. Fullerenes have many technological applications and have even been detected in interstellar space. Curl, Smalley, and Kroto were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery. After receiving the Nobel, Curl continued to be associated with Rice University’s Laser Science Group and also pursued other areas of physical chemistry, such as DNA genotyping and sequencing. He retired in 2008. (Photo credit: Chemical Heritage Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Date in History: 23 August 1933